


Fandom & Bond Girl* Syndrome

by Saathi1013



Category: James Bond (Classic movies), James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-17
Updated: 2014-07-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:21:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21699151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saathi1013/pseuds/Saathi1013
Summary: A discussion of the reductive use of tropes when fandom engages with media, with special focus on the James Bond films.Cross-posted from Tumblr with minor edits.
Kudos: 14





	Fandom & Bond Girl* Syndrome

So [FilmCritHulk](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fbadassdigest.com%2Fcategory%2Ffilm-crit-hulk-smash&t=MGRiZjdlMmFiYWYzZTlhNGQ1YTVlMWVhZDIwYjU4YTkzMjI1N2U2YixTaXFHNzZPQg%3D%3D&b=t%3Aa0fcI8dEKqldp7L0Psl5fQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fsaathi1013.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F92097514843%2Ffandom-and-bond-girl-syndrome&m=0) is writing a great series [over at Badass Digest](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fbadassdigest.com%2Ftag%2F007&t=ODY0NjUyYjM5NjgwYzc2NGRiMzhjNDU5N2UzOGRmMjY0ZGRjOWUwYixTaXFHNzZPQg%3D%3D&b=t%3Aa0fcI8dEKqldp7L0Psl5fQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fsaathi1013.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F92097514843%2Ffandom-and-bond-girl-syndrome&m=0) about the Bond franchise.

And, slight digression here: I grew up watching Bond movies. And when I say “grew up watching,” I mean that my dad is a _huge_ Bond fanboy; he would take over the television when there was a Bond Marathon, he owns a bunch of merch, including classic posters, and owns a goodly chunk of the movies and the soundtracks on various formats… I can name a Bond movie from like 10 seconds of its theme song and I have Opinions about all the Bond movies, including the apocryphal ones ( _Never Say Never Again_ and the first _Casino Royale_ , for those who don’t know). My favorite Bond movie is _On Her Majesty’s Secret Service_ and I will _throw_ _down_ about Lazenby, even though I don’t think it’s the _best_ Bond movie because it’s got a lot of gross weirdness even within the sliding scale of ‘Bond movies _always_ have some problematic baggage.’

So I _know_ me some Bond, okay. But really, I want to talk about Bond Girls* for a second. 

“Bond Girls” is the generally-used term for the female characters in Bond movies, primarily the ones Bond seduces &/or shares the most screen time with (Judi Dench's M aside). Their narrative purpose, according to popular belief, is always to be damselled &/or fridged eyecandy, and anything else they do is secondary to that. There are even subsets within the Bond Girl archetype, like the Reformed Bad Bond Girl (who works for the Villain until Bond beds them) or the Virtuous Bond Girl (who needs to be saved and is unlikely to succumb to Bond’s charms until after he’s 'earned’ her affections by saving her &/or the world) that fit neatly into other female-character tropes, like, say the Virgin/Whore dichotomy, except Bond gets to bang _all_ of them.

Yeah, remember that thing about the 'sliding scale of problematic baggage’? Bond movies in a nutshell.

The interesting thing, though, is that Bond Girls are a really good litmus test for how good a Bond movie is (FCH brings this up in his essays, too, and I was like YES THAT). And all right, admittedly, there’s a certain amount of subjectivity to ranking Bond movies in the first place, but bear with me for a second.

“Lead” Bond Girls usually get a lot of screen time. But that means they need a reason to be there and stuff to do while they’re there. Some Bond movies use excuses as flimsy as a wet paper bag, and no matter how good the actress *cough*Halle*cough*, the results can be flat and drag down the whole movie. But on the other hand, when there’s a good actress with a Bond Girl role that has agency, awareness, emotional heft, and organic significance to the main plot, the whole movie can _soar_.

But, like, they’re _just_ Bond Girls, right? All we need to do is say the words “Bond Girl” and we immediately write that character off, turn off our brain and evaluate them solely based on their looks (how many “Bond Girls” articles boil down to “Hottest” lists?) - or worse yet, write off that character _because_ of her looks and not, say, bad writing/acting/directing *cough*DeniseRichards*cough*. And when we _do_ engage in thoughtful critique of the Bond Girl archetype, it’s usually solely focused on how toxic and damaging that archetype is overall, and the best examples for such an argument.

And let me be clear here: Bond Girls are _not_ products of groundbreaking feminist filmmaking. There’s a _really good reason_ that most thoughtful critique of the archetype is about how problematic it is.

HOWEVER, Bond Girls are _not_ universally interchangeable. Vesper Lynd is not Eve Moneypenny is not Pussy Galore is not Tracy Draco is not Xenia Onatopp is not Solitaire is not May Day. And yet, they’re often discussed (and subsequently judged &/or dismissed) as if they _are_ interchangeable cookie-cutter cardboard [Sexy Lamps](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Sexy_Lamp_Test). "Bond Girl" is a label, and in discussing the female characters with that label, we treat them as _homogenous_ , which I think is not only inaccurate but troubling in and of itself. 

Looking at a female character and reducing her to the nearest handy archetype, discarding any additional complexity she might have, is _troubling_.

You see this also with “Manic Pixie Dream Girls” - a label, it seems, that gets slapped on any free-spirited, youthful, “quirky” female character. Or the whole “Strong Female Character” issue, wherein many filmmakers read audiences desire for female characters with characterizations as “strong” (ie, complex and multifaceted) as male characters’, give those female characters masculine traits (but not without keeping the femme eyecandy factor, natch).

But dismissing all young and free-spirited female characters as MPDGs, we set a standard that youthfulness and free-spiritness is inherently a bad thing. We dismiss all characters that have even a _whiff_ of that label, which usually starts off super-specific and becomes gradually so vague as to be meaningless in popular discourse. 

By dismissing all ass-kicking female characters as SFC stereotypes, we risk writing off, say, Natasha Romanoff, who’s a hell of a lot more complex than most movie reviewers gave her credit for, after the first Avengers movie. They saw the “catsuit” (as tight as Captain America’s) and the guns, and overlooked that she played a key role in every single “[beat](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FBeat_%28filmmaking%29&t=ZTFlNDViMzRmN2YxNDZhNzRmZmQxNDBhYTRkNGE0YjMyZDE0NTJhMCxTaXFHNzZPQg%3D%3D&b=t%3Aa0fcI8dEKqldp7L0Psl5fQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fsaathi1013.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F92097514843%2Ffandom-and-bond-girl-syndrome&m=0)” of the first Avengers movie, from recruitment to intelligence gathering to facing down the Hulk to closing the intradimensional portal thingy.

In short: by using tropes as ways to label and then dismiss female characters, we miss the entire point of why tropes are useful. Tropes are useful in identifying and examining patterns of media production, and the structural iniquities therein. Tropes are not the _end_ of a conversation about stereotypes in media, but the _beginning_ of one.

And yet, we use them _reductively_ , as boxes in which we must sort female characters and by which we must judge them, instead of gateways to larger discussions about media stereotypes and patterns.

You see this a lot with female love interests - going back to the MCU, 'cos it’s handy, Jane Foster was often written off as “just” Thor’s love interest after the first Thor movie, of little narrative import, when I think the first movie passes not only the Bechdel test, but also the Mako Mori test and the Sexy Lamp test. She is integral to the plot, has her own motivations and agency, and is never reduced to eye candy.

But she was Thor’s love interest, so fandom rarely treats her as more than that - while an argument can be made that Thor was also the love interest in _Jane’s_ story, and he’s rarely dismissed for that fact.

On the other hand, when female characters are more complex than that, or don’t fit neatly into readily-available (and easily-digestible) tropes, they can get hate for not conforming to expectations. See: Mako Mori, Joan Watson, Pepper Potts (who gets both lambasted for being a love interest, but also for failing to be a doormat in that role), etc.

It’s also worth noting here that - as usual - this 'reduction to tropes’ is not merely limited to female characters, but also happens to characters who’re PoC (&/or some other marginalized identity). There is a very narrow range within which characters who are not white cis straight men are considered 'good’ examples of their 'type,’ and if they step outside that ever-shifting range, watch out. Meanwhile, white cis straight men can run the whole gamut, can play to extremes and be beloved and celebrated for it.

Tropes are valuable; discussing stereotypes in popular media narratives is a worthwhile and valid pursuit.

But using tropes as _barriers_ that limit what persons of marginalized identities can or should be, or as handy recycling bins into which we can discard _all_ characters that even _remotely_ fit the trope (while imposing no such limitation on white cis straight dudes), can _magnify_ and _reinforce_ media’s flaws in fanspaces.

Which, if you know me at all, is exactly the kind of thing I find troubling and disappointing. I think fandom has the potential to be more thoughtful and creative than that.

…but ymmv tho, natch.

* ETA: [killerkhaleesi](http://tmblr.co/mVDr3JmOYbNx_BSF7d9OtWg)’s tags in a reblog [of the original Tumblr post] reminded me of a tangent I forgot to add: the term “Bond Girl” is pretty infantilizing - and troubling in the sense that they don’t even get their _own_ trope name, but a label that defines them solely in relationship to a (the main) male character. But for good or ill, that’s the classic trope/label one can use for female characters in Bond films, so that’s the one I used for clarity’s sake.


End file.
